At the LED/OLED Lighting Technology Expo in Tokyo from April 15 to 17, 2009, a number of exhibitors had introduced their LED fluorescent lamps that can be installed in existing fluorescent lamp sockets.

Samsung Electronics America, Inc., a market leader in consumer electronics and telecommunications, today announced that it has partnered with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to provide consumer electronics and home appliances for the ‘Change the World, Start with ENERGY STAR’ campaign event at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. through Earth Day, April 22.

W2 Architectural Lighting, a lighting products provider specializing in architectural applications, will introduce VAMP LED Spotlights, a new series of track fixtures developed specifically for the specification market, at 2009 Lightfair International.

Nabesei Co Ltd, an electronic parts maker in Japan, exhibited plants grown under irradiation of LED lights in three different colors at an exhibition that took place from April 15 to 17, 2009, in Tokyo.

Rubicon Technology Inc., a LED sapphire substrate provider, claimed to have successfully grown what it believes to be the world’s largest sapphire crystal (or boule) which weighs 200 kg.

Raysun Huaguang Optoelectronics Co., Ltd. of China has qualified gallium nitride (GaN) and arsenic phosphide (AsP) metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) systems from Veeco Instruments Inc., a tool provider in comprehensive fields, for high volume production of red and blue high-brightness light emitting diodes.

Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S., has joined the LED City Program, a worldwide joint effort initiated by Cree, a leader in the LED industry, to promote and deploy energy-efficient LED lighting all over the world.

Illumination Power and control specialist Endicott Research Group (ERG), known for its expertise in powering CCFL and LED backlights for LCDs, is developing new LED driver solutions for the solid state lighting market.  Leveraging technology developed for its CCFL inverters and LED backlight drivers, ERG will be introducing a family of Smart Force™ LED drivers that combine full-function power supplies with energy-efficient controllers for commercial, industrial, architectural and other SSL applications.

Samsung Mobile Display said on Sunday that it predicts the global smartphone market to grow to 500 million units in 2012 from 170 million in 2009, accounting for 29 per cent of the entire mobile phone market in 2012. And OLED screens could appear on 50 per cent of all mobile phones within next five years, the company predicted.

The first solid-state street lighting solution in Portugal is to be implemented along the Fidalgo Aprendiz in Pombal City. LUXEON Rebel LEDs from Philips Lumileds, a division of Royal Philips Electronics, are used in the new streetlight developed by BlueSpan, a provider LED lighting solutions. The streetlight's technical design was the result of a cooperative development effort between Philips Lumileds and optics expert Fraen.

Aeon Lighting Technology has launched a brand new street light, the Lodestar Street Light S02. The benefit of this street light is that it’s developed with a light weight design. It can work almost anywhere in the world, suitable with -40°C to 40°C ambient temperature. The most important is that it’s built with our most advanced LED street lighting technology for excellent stability and high performance. It has surpassed all of our previous street lights in that it provides better performance and lighting.

At an exhibition held last week in Tokyo, the Japanese company Kaga Components Co Ltd exhibited a LED lighting power supply apparatus in which the electrolytic capacitor has been removed to get a lifetime extended to more than 100,000 hours as well as a smaller size.

The new Infrared Ostar Lighting LED from Osram Opto Semiconductors provides 3.5 W of optical output power at 1A with six powerful thin-film chips and a hemispherical. The beam angle and radiant intensity can be varied with standard secondary optics which are readily available on the market. The hexagonal honeycomb shape of this high-power component enables multiple IR LEDs to be combined to form a large space-saving matrix so that the output power can be increased many times.

Universal Display Corporation, inventor of the UniversalPHOLED™ phosphorescent OLED technology, today announced that the company’s Chief Technical Officer Dr. Julie Brown presented at FINETECH JAPAN’s first ever LED/OLED Lighting Technology Exposition which is held in Tokyo, Japan from April 15 – 17.

In response to the latest industry chromaticity standard for solid-state lighting, Edison Opto has introduced the SSL bin groups in accordance to the 8 ranges defined by ANSI C78.377. In this rapid industry, the quality and efficiency of LED applications upgrade from time to time.To qualified and unified all products of LED lightings, many industry standards, including ENERGY STAR, has adopted the ANSI C78.377 bin group guideline to help consumers defined it.  

White LED backlight in LCD TVs will be the mainstream of the market rather than RGB three-color LED backlight, said Yuji Motomura of Toshiba in the company’s new "Regza" LCD TV series presentation.

Taiwan`s biggest LED packager Everlight Electronics Co., Ltd. and Genesis Photonics Inc., one of the nation’s major LED makers, are venturing into China’s LED streetlight market which is estimated to have a annual demand of over 1 million units.

GlasWeld, an international glass repair solutions provider, today announced that its Technical Services Division is in final testing stages of ultraviolet (UV) light emitting diodes (LED) for its auto glass repair curing systems.

OptoElectronix announced Wednesday a new series of small, high-efficient, 180-degree LED modules. The round, 60mm (2.35-inch) diameter, aluminum modules are precisely engineered for optimal thermal management. They integrate the LED, lens, and electronics, and are rated for 50,000 hours. The modules are designed to flush mount through a standard 44.5mm (1.75-inch) mounting hole with three screws, and the flange and lens are only 4mm (0.16 inches) thick.

Bloom of worldwide lightweight and ultra-thin laptops market is boosting use of LED backlights in netbook PCs and CULV-based notebook PCs, from which Taiwanese LED industry is benefiting significantly, according to industry sources.

LED lighting developer ilumisys Inc. is to partner with the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) to develop environmentally sustainable solid-state lighting on a $590,000 grant from the Department of Energy (DOE).

Inlustra Technologies, a US-based startup spun out from the world-renowned gallium nitride research laboratories at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has now developed a scalable production process for nonpolar and semipolar GaN substrates. The company is expanding its production facilities and has recently started to fill orders from customers. 

Opto Diode Corporation, a US-based manufacturer of LEDs, has recently developed a new 60 Die LED array product line.

Mouser Electronics,  Inc., an electronic component distributor known for its rapid introduction of the newest products, announced on Tuesday to have signed an agreement with OSRAM Opto Semiconductors to distribute the lighting, sensor, and visualization sectors, adding to its existing portfolio of OSRAM’s high-powered, mid-powered, and standard LEDs as well as infrared and sensor products.

Seoul Semiconductor, a leading LED maker of Korean, has signed an agreement to license its UV patent for a portable fluorescent forgery detector. Portable fluorescent forgery detectors are mainly applied in identification of forgeries of bank notes, securities, passports, gift coupons, and ID cards by commercial banks, financial companies and small businesses that mainly transact securities. As counterfeit money raise concerns around the world, demand of the product is expected to grow substantially.

Taiwan government has got plan to invest in the new energy industry and to develop it into another industry with annual output value exceeding NT$1 trillion, according to the Flagship Plan For The New Energy Industry which is scheduled to be launched by the Cabinet on April 23. Photovoltaic and LED lighting will be stressed as two mainstays in the industry.

Taiwan government is planning to invest NT$50 billion (US$1.48 billion) to the adoption of devices powered by renewable energy and green industries, including LED, as part of its NT$500 billion public construction program, reported the Chinese-language Economic Daily News yesterday, citing Minister of the Public Construction Commission Fan Liang-shiow.

Gardasoft Vision in Cambridge, UK, has acquired the worldwide rights to VCube LED Linelight and Traffic Monitoring lights. The liquid-cooled VLX2 Linelights feature brightness many times higher than that of conventional air-cooled LED linelights. They can be applied in linescan applications such as printing, paper, plastic film, or web inspection up to 4 m wide.

Braemar Energy Ventures has invested in Nuventix Inc., a cooling systems company in Texas, according to the company. Braemar contributed $3 million of the $8 million total that closes out the Series C round for Nuventix. Another $1 million was from Uniquest of Korea and the remaining come from an agreement with Silicon Valley Bank that makes $4 million credit available to the company.

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and Advanced Thermal Devices (ATD) Inc. have recently received the safety certifications offered by UL Taiwan. The government-backed ITRI was awarded the certification for an alternate current LED module, while ATD was awarded for an LED streetlight.